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I reinstalled my old HP ProBook 6460b with Ubuntu 24.04.

It no longer boots on the SSD (Same issue https://askubuntu.com/questions/1490970/my-hp-does-not-boot-after-fresh-ubuntu-22-04-install).

This is not a BIOS boot order issue: The harddisk is listed immediately after USB, and it worked previously. So something in Ubuntu's install process caused this.

If I move the disk to a USB adapter cable, then I can boot from the SSD just fine.

So the machine boots fine from the disk as long as it is via USB.

How can I build a tiny USB-disk that has enough info to direct the boot process to the SSD? (In old speak I am thinking of GRUB with root device = internal SSD /dev/sda).

The HP 6460b has experimental support for UEFI. Booting from USB works if UEFI is enabled or disabled.

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  • I don't have the Ubuntu 24.04 installer right in front of my mental eye, but when you select the "Something else" option in the "Installation Type" screen (where you can select things like "Erase whole disk and install ubuntu"), can't you select the device to install the bootloader to?
    – Marcus Müller
    Commented Jun 16 at 11:54
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    If UEFI install, you have to go into HP's System settings & change boot order there. I have installed just grub to older smaller flash drives to boot ISO with loopmount. But you have to create your own grub boot stanza as you do not have the software to create it that is in an install. With larger flash drives I do a full install & add boot stanzas to 40_custom. Old flash drive took almost an hour for full install, newer flash drive was about a half hour, and external SSD was 12 minutes. or I prefer SSD now for just about everything. I can post example of grub install or boot stanza if desired
    – oldfred
    Commented Jun 16 at 14:14

1 Answer 1

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This worked for me:

# mkfs.vfat /dev/sdd1
# mount /dev/sdd1 /mnt
# grub-install --target=i386-pc --boot-directory=/mnt/boot /dev/sdd
# cat ./boot/grub/grub.cfg
set default=0
set timeout=5

menuentry "Chainload GRUB on Internal SSD" {
    set root=(hd2)
    chainloader +1
}

So there is barely any data on /dev/sdd.

The neat thing here is that the booted system is (indirectly) booted from /dev/sda, so I do not need to do special things if I want to upgrade grub/kernel: upgrades on /dev/sda will still work.

I just need to remember to leave the USB-disk connected when booting.

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  • This indicates you booted the Ubuntu 24.04 installation media in legacy BIOS mode, and so it installed the OS to boot in that same mode too. The chainloader +1 only ever works in legacy BIOS mode: in native UEFI boot mode, any chainloader statement would have to point to a *.efi file.
    – telcoM
    Commented Jun 17 at 3:40

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